Just some observations...not exhaustive however.

Well I got a CasioE105 (MIPS R4000 WindowsCE device...very slick) and a 64M
compact flash card (for all the audio books and music), and decided hey,
this might be a cool environment try to learn (no I don't really know
Smalltalk) Smalltalk/Squeak again on those long flights that I have to take
for work.

And coincidentally, I saw an email posted by Dean Swan on here about
installing Squeak on his CasioE100 (same as the 105 but without the
multimedia and the extra memory).  So thanks to Dean for a pointer to the
MIPS VM  (http://wwwisq.cs.uni-magedeburg.de/~raab/squeak/WindowsCE/MIPS), I
got it installed.  The first decision I made was to keep the exe in main
memory and take advantage of the 64M card for the image, source, changes.
(I could have fit everything into main memory, but I don't like clogging it
up).  So the first observation is that the FULL Squeak 2.4 fits on a
CasioE105.

Ok, I got it installed, now would it run.  Double tapping the image file
(you need to install a third-party file browser to do this on the E105)
caused the usual Windows(CE) headache of "this file is not associated with
an application error.  Hm...and I know that Squeak won't let you open an
image by launching the executible...too bad...I still think this should be
standard.  Drag and drop doesn't work on the CE.   What to do.  The Casio
doesn't come with a nice utility to map an extension to an application.
Ptui!  I hate MS.  Ok, scrounging through the shareware/freeware sites I
came across a launcher/desktop utility called StarTap.  One of its features
is to associate documents to applications.  Ok...image associated with
Squeak executable.  Double-tap the image file and ooooooo the familiar
Squeak desktop appears.  Wow in color too!   Oh oh.  The startup Play With
Me windows aren't resized or positioned according to available screen
real-estate.

Suggestion (Note to self) #1:

   Resize the Play With Me windows (and all windows) so that they fit to the
devices screen size.  If screen is smaller than 'x' then set screen size to
device size and position upper left corner to (0,0)


Ok,  I can close out the Play With Me windows for now.   That works fine.  I
wonder what other windows do.  Open up a browser.  Gee it sizes correctly.
I wonder why the Play With Me windows act differently.   The browser is
sized to fit the device's screen.  But the origin isn't (0,0)...it should
be.

Suggestion (Note to self) #2:

  Related to #1.  All windows should reposition to (0,0) if the screen size
is smaller than "x" to make use of the limited space available.


Ok...lets see if Morphic works ok.  Morphic works nicely.  And even the
piano keyboard morph works and Squeak sound works fine on the Casio.

Ok...let's try Alice.   This has the same problem with screen size.  The
windows that are open by default are too big for the  screen.  However,
Energizer bunny seems to run fine.

Back to the base world.  Popping up a menu seems a bit sluggish, more
sluggish than the rest of the environment. Moving, resizing windows, and
using the flap out menus seem to respond well. Wonder why popping up a menu
by tapping on the desktop is so slow to respond.

Ok, lets try some code entry...lets see if that's usable.   Bring up the
virtual keyboard to tap in some code into a browser.  That works and the
code runs.  Close out the virtual keyboard.  Oh oh...Squeak doesn't
recognize or respond to the fact that hte virtual keyboard is no longer
displayed and Squeak doesn't refresh the screen.  So I have a ghost keyboard
image.  Ok force a screen redraw from the Squeak menu.  That works...sort
of.  I have some Keyboard droppings around the border and edges of the
Squeak window.

Suggestion (Note to self) #3:

  Either fix the screen refresh...probably too difficult and too closely
tied to the Casio WinCE environment.  Or build a Squeak virtual keyboard
(sort of like the piano) for text entry via mouse/pen taps for systems that
don't have physical keyboards....speech recognition is probably out of the
question.


That's it for now.  I haven't tried networking or any of the other Squeak
goodies.

If anyone wants to tackle the above items feel free to do so.  Or if someone
wants to point me in the right direction, that would be appreciated as well,
although as I said, I really don't know Squeak/Smalltalk and it would
probably be faster if you did it ;-)


Generally speaking, I think the full Squeak would work VERY well on the
CasioE105 (assuming you have the memory for all the pieces.)   I did run
Squeak with just the VM and the image.  That works too with the normal
limitations, and the startup warnings of missing files didn't fit the screen
size ;-)

Thoughts, suggestions, etc. are all welcome.


Cheers,
S